“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Attached to the deleted session for April 24, 1979.

(Last night April 23, Monday, Rob suddenly got super-relaxed and really floppy before our scheduled Seth session. In the meantime though as I went into the john, I started to pick up some of the things Seth was going to discuss, and after Rob began his odd relaxation, I got more. As best as I could I told Rob what I was getting. We decided not to have the session—I don’t think Rob could have taken notes anyhow; besides I wanted him to take advantage of what was happening.

DELETED SESSION

(The first portion of these notes—as indicated—was written after supper on Monday night, preparatory to what I thought would be the regularly scheduled session for the evening. However, the session wasn’t held. Let me explain.

(In the last three days I’ve learned a number of interesting things about my continuing physical upsets—and will list some of my pendulum material should any portion of this session refer to them. The deleted session for April 18 has helped a great deal. My own insights through the pendulum tell me, for example, why Seth in that last private session said I have a “nervous stomach,” but nothing about the other hassles like, say, the side or groin. [It all seems to stem from the initial stomach difficulty.] I need to study more. I still don’t want to burden Jane with a series of sessions on my own problems. I know I can—and am—working them out. Each bit of information is bound to help.

(Now these notes are continued late Tuesday afternoon and night, before the session.

(They are much longer than they need to be for session notes, but I want the more detailed account for my own possible use in the indefinite future:

(Not long after finishing Monday’s notes, then, we sat for the session. I didn’t feel too well. Within a few minutes, however, I noticed that I was becoming quite relaxed. I sat with this notebook on my lap but didn’t exert myself to open it. My arms and legs, and head and neck, began to feel looser and looser. “It looks like I picked up a suggestion about relaxation,” I told Jane. “But I’ll be okay. I want to have the session,” I said in answer to her questions. She sat opposite me, smoking, waiting to go into trance. My head flopped back against the couch. “Wow....”

(Soon I didn’t care, though. My condition became so totally relaxed that any conscious and deliberate movement was forgotten unless I made a strong effort to exert myself—to pick up a piece of paper, to lay this notebook on the coffee table, say. Fortunately I’d put the cats in the cellar before the session so I wouldn’t have to do it later. Jane was obviously concerned. “Are you all right?” she kept asking, and I hardly replied. This was easily the most complete experience of its kind I’d ever known, and it was deepening.

(As soon as she saw that I couldn’t take notes. Jane began describing to me what she’d started to pick up from Seth about my condition. I was both very interested and so far out in my own world of sensation that I could hardly comment. I was taking a “body vacation,” she told me. She said much more, which she wrote about briefly Tuesday afternoon at my request. Her notes are inserted at the end of my notes. Seth, Jane said, would explain the whole thing in the next session, whenever that would be held.

(Jane, hungry, ate cookies and drank a glass of milk I’d set out for myself before the session. Lately during sessions she’s been sipping red wine. When I could speak coherently, I offered her the piece of cornbread I’d set out with the milk, but she refused it. By now, I was conscious enough to sit with her through the balance of a dated mystery movie starring Rock Hudson. [He was caught as the murderer, finally.]

(I slept at once. although Jane lay awake until about 2 AM. I felt many reminders and remnants of the experience throughout the next day—Tuesday—especially in the arms and legs: They were often loose and floppy, with a peculiar lightness and ease of motion in the joints particularly. At my request Jane wrote her account of the non-session events of last night, and it’s attached. I noticed more signs of the same sort of relaxation before tonight’s session was due, and wondered if I could focus upon Seth clearly enough, or write fast enough. After a number of hesitations, which only confused Jane as to what I really wanted to do, I sat for the session.

(Long pause.) The two of you mixed and matched your characteristics, and put them together in such a fashion that they would jointly form a completely new kind of creation, in terms of art and psychology, and this was bound to produce expansions of your consciousnesses, and stresses and strains, when you came across portions of your ideas that had not grown along with the rest of you. The sessions, as they exist, exist as they do because of your actions and Ruburt’s.

Now: Ruburt’s rendition of my absentee session last evening was basically correct. When you believe that relaxation means that you are limp, that you can do nothing, that you have let go (with humor), then, of course, you experience it as such. Your body was activated so that it was naturally sedated. To both of you, however, relaxation means somehow to be lax, to shuffle (louder) rather than to be resolute and determined and forever at it; and so then natural relaxation can seem overwhelming, for you are afraid, both of you, that if you relax you will do nothing.

You have been a good and true partner to Ruburt – and indeed you have. Though you do not have children, the two of you do indeed possess a unique relationship, and that in itself is an achievement. You have each given meaning to each other’s lives, because you have each sought for it separately also. You are an accomplished person in painting and in writing, and the characteristics that also give you those abilities merge together to form the framework of the sessions, and the excellent quality of the notes—in which, by the way, you communicate to others very clearly those ideas of excellence, and those visions, that sustain many readers.

I am not given to flattery. But these are statements of fact that you should recognize as such. End of session.

A note: I do want you to remember Ruburt’s version of last night’s session, and follow my suggestions concerning changes that can serve as variations—working variations—to allow you some rest and refreshment.

(10:09 PM. “Before the session.” Jane said, “I told Seth I wanted whatever was necessary to help you. I didn’t care what it was. I’d stay out of the way as much as possible. If you were sick of me, or wanted out—anything—I just wanted to know so you’d get better. I know you love me, but maybe you get sick of my running your life or something like that....”

(Jane said more. She was so emphatic and serious that I had to laugh, though in a subdued way, for I still felt lingering effects from my deep relaxation of last night. I was, for instance, a bit slow writing these notes—yet, oddly, I’d been able to keep up with Seth all right during the session itself.